


It's A Small Office

by dancinbutterfly



Series: Justified [11]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Age Difference, Almost Anonymous Sex, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Hackers, Alternate Universe - Journalism, Alternate Universe - Law Enforcement, Alternate Universe - Lawyers, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Sex, Banter, Biting, But not quite, Caretaking, Computers, Daddy Kink, Desk Sex, Dominance, Grey-Ace Vasquez, Kissing, M/M, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Older Man/Younger Man, Orders, Porn with Feelings, Strangers to Lovers, Submission, Under-negotiated Kink, Unsafe Sex, Vulnerability, warnings in the tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:27:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21610888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: Of all the offices, in all the world, this pretty boy journalist walked into his. Faraday was not prepared.
Relationships: Joshua Faraday/Red Harvest
Series: Justified [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/719169
Comments: 11
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> CHARACTER NOTE: This story makes previous Vasquez and Red Harvest elements no longer canon for the Justified series. The story Ready To Get Dirty is no longer part of this universe but I have not taken it down in case people liked it but that Vasquez is not the Vasquez I will be writing for the rest of this series.
> 
> Roll mouse over text for popup text of warning:! **SPOILERY WARNING WITHIN!**! or click the "more notes" link to read the warning in the End Notes. AS ALWAYS READ WITH YOUR SELF-CARE IN MIND.
> 
> thank you so much to poemsingreenink for letting me write at you, to panda and bast for the beta and for Decoy for being the reason i still write this.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of all the offices, in all the world, this pretty boy muckraking journalist had to walk into his. Faraday was not prepared at all.

> **Raylan Givens:** You concerned about me coming down here?  
>  **Art Mullen:** It's a small office, Raylan. I'm concerned when we switch brands of coffee.

\- **Justified** 1.01 _Fire in the Hole_

* * *

Vaquero checked the sixth and final back-up burner email account and while there were a few new items in the inbox (work related items mostly: overdue fulfillment of old invoices, a job offer that would make enemies in three puppet governments, some requests for civilian clients who wanted a la carte tasks for small scale problems he could pass along to his favorite colleagues who fit better with those kinds of needs, and an interview request from an investigative podcast journalist for a story on counterintelligence work in corporate espionage) none of them were the simple two-word message that should be there, waiting to be read.

Fuck. Fucking fuck. No news was not good news.

Vanquisher missed check-in. For the third time. That’s never happened before. Not ever. Even when they can’t get to a machine with TOR, Vanquisher has always gotten in touch by the third check-in date.

Vaquero isn’t the kind of person to panic lightly. You can’t be when you do the sort of things that they do. Panicking leads to mistakes. Mistakes get you arrested at best and worst isn’t anything to contemplate.

Vaquero doesn’t have many of those. Family, sure, but friends? No and Vanquisher is a close friend and even in circles they frequent together, as underground as they are, a friend is a rare and precious thing.

And alright, maybe Vaquero is a little paranoid, or a lot, but again, in their circles, that’s a given. It can’t be helped. For god’s sake, when you personally have hacked into the most secure servers of a few dozen of the most powerful entities in the world, private and governmental alike, you get a little paranoid. And you do it to help a friend only to watch people connected to that hack start dropping like flies, well, you connect the dots.

And hey, like Vaquero told Vanquisher when this first started, all sorts of things happen on the dark web. There’s no room for creatures like them to throw stones and even if there were, the first time they tried the glass mainframe Vaquero worked on would be shattered.

Friendship wasn’t earned easily and once given, you stuck by your friends, no matter what, that was Vaquero’s stance on the matter. And anyone who Vanquisher took out probably got what they deserved, because Vanquisher had shared the (albeit heavily redacted) details about their motives before asking for help to kill. They had given a piece of a terrible darkness into Vaquero's trust before Vaquero had done anything that could be officially considered illegal but if even one thing Vanquisher had intimated was true, the targets probably got off light with a death sentence.

But that wasn’t the issue now. The issue now was that Vanquisher was missing. Vaquero reaches out on Signal and gets nothing, nothing, and more nothing, and cursed.

The last information found was about Texas. Property was bought and sold. Bodies were found. And the feds were looking into the situation because of the Florida Incident.

There are things that will take longer to research, especially if Vanquisher has gone to ground. Fuck. This called for a social engineering gig, again, damnit. That was simple at least. Unpleasant, but simple. It’s easy to blend in, easy to hide, easy to get work on the one hand, time-consuming and full of personal risk on the other, but Vaquero didn’t have a lot of friends. It was the kind of thing that demanded exceptional measures.

Creating a vacancy for an IT consultant in the federal district of east Texas is basic enough thanks to open backdoors left by the at-work Facebook use of no less than four HR personnel. From there it was nothing to add a pool of poor candidates pulled from job boards to contrast the glory of the Vaquero’s exemplary, and, carefully doctored civilian resume, and flag it for interview fast tracked for hire.

Now “Javier Vasquez” just had to sit back and wait for the phone to ring. And pack. But Vanquisher always said that was the easiest part. With a go-bag always ready, all you ever really needed to take with you was your computer. Everything else you could get when you got there. The leaving everything behind was what was hard.

~*~*~

Today is a good day. Faraday has a lot of mediocre days, shit days, hard days, long days, days where it feels like nothing is getting done, where he feels like he’s going flat out going backward or worst of all, he’s fighting on the wrong side. But not today. Today is good. Today he has made actual progress. He has the signed order of letter immunity faxed fresh from DC and permission to file the start of the federal investigations on NPMI’s actions here in Tyler. God knows how long it will take to get to the point where they can use a court compelled immunity for Billy but this should be enough to protect him from what he’s said and done so far and get them on the road to nailing a few murdering, child-raping billionaires to the wall, and that’s something. That’s a lot actually. That’s a good damn day, if he does say so himself, and he does say so himself, thank you fucking kindly.

It’s only two but he’s been working sixteen-hour days for the last two months and he hasn’t had a break all day; surely it is five o’clock somewhere. There’s a ridiculously expensive bottle of whiskey in his desk in his bottom desk drawer from Goody with his name literally written on it. His fingers hit the thin neck and he only feels a little bad that he’ll be drinking from a plastic cup.

Ah well, Faraday thinks as he watches beautiful clear amber pour from the lip, fuck it. He’s a savage on a government salary. He can’t afford crystal anyway.

Turns out it’s a good thing he’s not drinking out of crystal glasses. Otherwise, when the door to his office slams open and a Native American kid in ripped jeans and a patch-covered denim jacket over a black T-shirt with an outline of the continental US anthropomorphized into a pig with the words “Police State” printed inside bursts in, Faraday would have had the added hazard of broken glass to worry about on top of the tragic waste of insanely expensive incredibly delicious booze spilling all over his desk and making its way towards his desktop terminal.

“What the bleeding fuck?”

“You really should have emailed me back, prosecutor,” the anarchist with a fairly sedate mohawk haircut for the number of anti-establishment patches on his jacket declared, kicking the door shut behind him. “Or returned my calls. Or at’ed me on Twitter at least.”

Faraday blinks at the truly unfair jawline which produced a deep voice and says “I don’t have a Twitter,” like an absolute idiot.

He’s in shock. That’s what this is. It’s shock. Funny, he’d have thought Goody and his killer broke him of that ability but no, he can still be shaken.

“Figures,” the punk says with a sigh of disgust before dropping into one of Faraday’s chairs. He did not invite him to do that but there he goes, doing it anyway. And Faraday still has no idea who he is or how he got in here. Isn’t he supposed to have a staff? He’s pretty sure he had an assistant. Evan? Ewan? No. Earl. It was Earl, who was probably on another undeserved break with his asshole friend Dickie in Records and Earl was so fucking fired.

“Should I know you?” Faraday asks, peeling his coat off to do some damage control before the amber gold ruined all his hard work. Yeah he had backed up the original draft of the agreement but this version was a goddamn work of art. Faraday had gone beyond polish. Shit, he had even mustered up the balls to ask Sam “I-Did-Five-Tours-In-‘Nam-And-All-I-Got To-Show-For-My-GI-Bill-Was-This Masters-in-1870s-American-Literature” Chisolm to give the beast a once-over with a red pen and his ancient copy of Strunk & White. It was polished perfection. Faraday scrambled to send a copy to himself and another to Goodnight.

That done he scanned for something, anything, to clean up the spill with and came up with nothing. Fantastic. And he couldn’t leave this guy in his office to go get paper towels and he had the air of someone who would require security to be removed.

Fucking shit. Faraday grabbed the desktop tower and tried to move it away from the spreading spill but all that did was strain where the cables connected to the wall and spread the whiskey across the desk further. “Fuck this.”

“You alright there, hoss?”

“Fuck you too.” Faraday snapped, despite the fact that it was absolutely not the professional thing to do.

“Wow,” Faraday’s new nemesis mused from his seat a safe distance from his island of personal chaos. “You really don’t know who I am.”

“I coulda sworn I just asked,” Faraday grumbled, trying desperately to figure out what to do next. Call IT maybe or the janitorial staff but fuck, his mom had worked as a janitor and if calling a busy cleaning person for his own stupid skittishness wasn’t the most entitled fucking thing in the world, he didn’t know what was.

Shit. He couldn’t lose his computer though. The government was not generous with its hardware and there were so many cases on his docket. He just couldn’t take the risk.

Biting the bullet, he peeled off his jacket and started mopping up with a grimace. Now his suit jacket would smell like whiskey. Wonderful. Nothing said powerful government official like eau du alcoholic. Ah, the nobility of public service.

A small black card landed on his wet jacket a second later declaring its holder to be Mr. A. Red Harvest, Associated Press. There were also a half dozen social media platforms, all of them some variation of @redharvest as their handle. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for about a month, Mr. Faraday.”

Oh, awesome. A member of the press had seen that display. Perfect. Faraday manages a thin smile anyway. “I’m afraid my duties as AUSA have kept me busy, Mr. Harvest.”

“Red Harvest,” he replies flatly.

“I’m sorry?”

“Red Harvest is my name.” Red Harvest corrects. “Get it right or don’t use it at all. I’ll answer to Sir just fine if you’ve got a problem.”

And wow, okay. Faraday isn’t sure if he’s going to loathe this Red Harvest character or like him too much for anyone in his position to like a member of the press but yeah, that was something else.

“All right. My apologies, Mr. Red Harvest, but as I said, I’ve been a bit occupied.”

“That’s alright.” Red Harvest didn’t smile exactly but something around his eyes went warm and he crossed his ankle over his knee. “I wanted to talk to you about that anyway.”

Faraday took a deep breath, mentally walking through the new sleight of hand trick he’d been learning to deescalate himself because Faraday couldn’t afford to go to trial when he murdered this Red Harvest guy with his booze soaked jacket. He wasn’t any good at defense law and honestly, he didn’t trust anyone but himself to represent him.

“Did you now?”

Red Harvest did smile then. And Jesus leaping Christ on a crutch, that smile was somehow both sharp with a predatory edge like a crocodile in mud and filled with a kind of youthful joy that was typically only found on the faces of teenagers at the concerts of their favorite bands. The danger and delight in his expression made him look beautiful, and formidable and young all at once, though Red Harvest’s credentials mean he must be older than that. Surely. Because barely legal was not Faraday’s thing. Never was. Never would be. No. Just no. No matter how loudly the annoying, ever-present voice in his head was wondering what it would be like to be eaten alive by this guy.

“Yeah. I have a few questions about some recent killings that meet the jurisdiction for local police that got co-opted into a federal system despite not qualifying as federal crimes.” Red Harvest pulled out his phone and waved it cheerfully. “I thought you might have some answers for me.”

“What school paper did you say this is for?”

“I didn’t.” He loses the smile but the hunter’s focus remains. “Because I’m a contributing editor at Vice and Slate and three different publications you probably haven’t heard of, but you can go fuck yourself, white man.”

“What the fuck does race have to do with anything?” Faraday demands, suddenly lost. “Dude, I don’t care who or what you are. Because you are _twelve _.” There. Crisis averted.__

__“I’m twenty-four.”_ _

__Oh no. That’s not twelve. That’s not even that young. And it’s also… probably within the ‘half plus seven’ rule for him. Maybe. Probably._ _

__Shit._ _

__Faraday is too stressed to do mental math. The only important fact here is that twenty-four is at least well within the confines of fully legal._ _

__Fucking shit._ _

__Really there was only solution here. Faraday was going to have to be an absolute asshole. Ugh, that was only fun when he actually wanted to do it._ _

__Fuck, shit, damn._ _

__Ah, well. He’s a master performer. That’s his job. He can steel himself for showtime. Now._ _

__“Close enough,” he drawls, going for the kind of obnoxious superiority that the worst kind of high-priced, private college educated criminal defense lawyers brought to his court rooms before he destroyed them. “My point stands.”_ _

__Red Harvest doesn’t even blink at the dismissal. He’s busy looking at his phone and his thumbs fly over the screen for a few seconds before he asks, “So, about the two bodies of men employed by BB Freight subsidiaries?”_ _

__That little detail hadn’t been released to the press. Billy’s two East Texas victims were employees who had never met for a small real estate concern Gatling Holdings and a call center called Western Carriage that were both at least three shell companies away from BB Freight which was so far removed from NPMI that when all was said and done could pound for pound produce findings in the same league as the Panama Papers. Which no one outside the Attorney General, a pair of US marshals, and one mass murderer should know. But this Woodward and Bernstein wannabe with unacceptable cheekbones knew. How the fuck did he know?_ _

__“What about them?” Look, he thought, nothing up my sleeve._ _

__“You were telling me why the Feds sniped the cases away from local PD. What was so important you didn’t leave them to the rangers.”_ _

__“I’m not a Fed. I’m a prosecutor. Does beg the question, how much time does a contributing editor spend digging into the affairs of small town ticket-punchers or grown ass adults playing playing cowboy dress up?” Faraday mused with a small smile. Please, pick a card, any card from the deck._ _

__“Depends on the case. Probably not as much as you should be.” He rolls his eyes and does something else on his phone. Maybe he’s tweeting that exact sentiment to whoever follows him. Show the card to the audience, Faraday thinks, but not to me. Never to me._ _

__“Broadest strokes there, sport.” He drawls with a mean smile._ _

__“Sport?” Red Harvest practically growls._ _

__That’s it, Faraday wants to purr (and he can admit to himself only about sixty percent of the warm curl in his chest is in satisfaction that he’s playing into the trap, the other forty is just reacting to the rumble of his voice). Put the card back in the deck and watch my hands._ _

__“Kiddo.” He offers placatingly._ _

__Keep looking at my hands._ _

__“Kiddo?”_ _

__The meanness fades from his smile as a flush of real anger crawls up Red Harvest’s long, graceful neck. “You’re right. That sounds disparaging and as you pointed out, you’re very accomplished, Champ.”_ _

__Red Harvest doesn’t leap to his feet or anything so dramatic but he is a picture of rage, eyes bright, lips tight, brow flat. He looks ready to kill and all Faraday can do is hold up his palms, open and empty, and think, don’t take your eyes off my hands._ _

__The furious silence stretches between them tight and thin for a few glorious and terrifying heartbeats. Then Red Harvest muses “How often is typical for a federal prosecutor like yourself to drink at work during the day, Mr. Faraday?” and catches him like razor wire pulled taut across a busy pedestrian crossing, tense. It’s simple, shining and the perfect blow._ _

__“I wasn’t drinking.” He hadn’t gotten a chance._ _

__“Right. You were spilling. Which is interesting because it may be five o’clock somewhere but,” he lifts his left wrist and flicks it so his unbuttoned jacket cuff flings back exposing a thick leather strap that looks more like a bondage cuff than a watch band. “It’s barely 1:30. Most places where a cocktail would be appropriate have issues like Brexit or the next referendum before the African Union to worry about.”_ _

__Faraday can feel his tongue dry out in his mouth at the sight of the soft brown suede against olive skin and forces himself not to swallow. He’s being accused of alcoholism. That would look like weakness. And okay it is, he just went terribly weak but it’s not the kind of weak this Lois Lane wannabe twunk would assume._ _

__“You didn’t knock.”_ _

__“Can I quote you on that?”_ _

__“If you think Vice or Slate can hold up against the force of the DOJ, you go ahead.”_ _

__“I can hold my own.”_ _

__“Of course you can, Junior.”_ _

__“A drunk and a liar. You’re a paragon of virtue there, Pops.”_ _

__“Didn’t Daddy ever tell you not to talk back to your elders?”_ _

__“You are definitely not my daddy.” Red Harvest declares. His eyes narrow, doing a careful but intense scan of Faraday, no doubt taking in the rumpled shirt and sloppy tie but it’s appraising too and lingers a little longer than it needs to. Faraday can feel it gliding over his body like phantom fingertips along the pale stubble on his jaw, the sunken bridge of his sternum, the softness of his belly, the bright gleam of his steel belt buckle. “I don’t think you’re fit to be anyone’s daddy considering how bad you need someone to take care of you...” A long fine boned hand with black painted fingernails reaches out and rights the name plaque that his frantic clean up job had toppled earlier. “Are you, Joshua?”_ _

__Then Faraday’s mouth just goes off because what’s self preservation? Never heard of her. And what comes out is just one word._ _

__“Please.”_ _

__Shit he doesn’t even know what he's asking for. Please kindly get the hell out. Please shut the fuck up. Please excuse me I have to go jerk off furiously in the lavatory. Please do whatever you’re implying before I spontaneously combust. Please take care of me because I don’t ever remember anyone doing that, not really, not in my whole life, not like how you mean._ _

__“Yes,” Red Harvest agrees with a smile that reminds Faraday strongly of the coyote that used to roam around the property in that shitty law firm he interned with in Arizona back in his first summer of law school. It always seemed like it knew something that he didn’t because what could be so great in the dumpsters of some office park at 2am? But something was because it came and went unmolested and looked healthy and happy if the way it played in the parking lot in the dark with empty boxes and plastic containers was any indication. That four legged fucker had spent the whole summer winning at the world it was presented with on it’s own terms while Faraday’d been sleep-deprived, hungry, and angry at how desperate he felt all the time._ _

__Even being reminded of that kind of self-satisfaction rankles. That may be why he doesn’t like being around Goodnight when he’s seen Billy within twenty-four hours, actually. Coming face-to-face with it is overwhelming for how empty it makes him feel, and how jealous because he wants to feel that and he’s only felt it a few times, when he’s won a case, but Red Harvest smiling at him says he knows what feeling like that all the time is like. Faraday wants to know know too._ _

__He also wants to run from this but he smells like a distillery and it’s his fucking office. Goddamnit. Faraday shakes his head and reaches for the phone on his desk. “I have to call IT.”_ _

__He watches the kid nod and rise to his feet as the new guy with the barely decipherable accent picks up on the other end. “Hola, IT. Digame have you tried turning your machine off and turning it back on again yet?”_ _

__As the new IT guy speaks, Red Harvest crosses to the door. He forces himself to speak as his painted nails reach for the knob. “This is Josh Faraday in AUSA office. If you could swing by when you get a moment.” There. He didn’t trade privileged information to get the reporter to stay or beg or anything remotely degrading._ _

__Red Harvest gives him a long, appraising look and turns the lock on his office door. “Tell IT you have to go now .”_ _

__Fuck. “IT I have to go now.”_ _

__“Eh? You didn’t answer my—.”_ _

__Faraday hangs up with shaking hands a split second before Red Harvest comes around the desk. It’s wild because he doesn’t feel like he saw him move but that can’t be right. Faraday never took his eyes off the younger man._ _

__Red Harvest smiles, all slightly crooked bright white teeth. “Good boy.”_ _

__Faraday knows, as those nimble black-tipped fingers dance up his chest and pluck at his buttons, that he’s going to be consumed. He’s not prepared in any way, shape or form but Jesus, is he looking forward to it._ _


	2. Chapter 2

Vaquero is not used to being hung up on. No, not Vaquero here. Here Vaquero has to become something else, someone else, with an identity and a bank account and a chain of command and a schedule and a whole host of other things thought left behind for good a long time ago. It’s all very inconvenient. Vaquero really hadn’t missed most of it, actually, before coming to look for Vanquisher. 

But this is here and now where Vaquero has to be Javier Vasquez. Vaquero didn’t ever really use phones to make calls but here and now, Vasquez answers calls all goddamn day. And Vasquez, here and now, is not used to being hung up on. Well no. People actually hang up on Javier Vasquez - Mr. Vasquez, Javier, Javi, Vas, Buddy, Dude, IT Guy - all the time. Once he gets the Internet back up or gets the shared drive reconnected to the laptop or undeletes a very important email it’s always “thank you so much I gotta go”, click. But no one hangs up on him before he fixes what they broke. It’s just not done. 

So he is suspicious. 

He’s suspicious of everything and everyone. Always. But this time even more so. 

He’s bugged every room in the building. That’s just good sense. The cameras were already there. Buying a tablet he only uses on the building WiFi which he has admin privileges for to access both? The only option really. He puts his Beatz earbuds in because fuck Apple and flips through his feeds to Faraday’s office.

“Now be a good boy for Daddy,” he hears as soon as the audio comes on proving that really the extra hundred bucks per unit for the high def recording devices were worth the money. “And lick it.”

The video is absolute garbage by comparison. It could barely reach 240p on its best day. But that’s still clear enough to see the star of the Eastern District Federal Court, shirt unbuttoned and twisted down his arms to expose his chest and pin his hands behind him, bend at a ninety degree angle and drag his tongue across the faux wood of his desk. Vasquez is not prepared for his moan or the way a hand darts out and grabs his hair. 

“Slower.”

The wrist the hand is attached to is wrapped in a thick leather cuff and for a moment Vasquez wonders if the man didn’t order a Dom or something but he steps into clearer view and reveals a guy who wouldn’t look out of place at an underground punk concert. His face isn’t very clear but he doesn’t make a sound as he drags Faraday's head over the desk once more. He licks the desk again, painfully slow and whimpers like it’s the best and worst thing ever and the punk meets him with a wet press of lips to the underside of his neck. 

“Thank me.”

“Fu-uck, thank you.”

The punk’s tongue clicks. “Try again, baby.”

His whine of distress is muffled by the table against his lips but Vasquez is still treated to the hi-def surround sound experience of a man at war with himself in low bass tones. He hits record like he forgot to before. It’s just in time to hear the U.S. Attorney croak out “Thank you, Daddy,” so raw and hoarse that Vasquez actually switches screens to check his levels in his audio driver. They’re all reading normal, the poor guerro is just that wrecked. 

“That’s more like it,” the punk hums in approval before bending over and hiding Faraday’s face from view. From the wet, sloppy sound the bugs pick up, they’re either eating something or kissing. Vasquez is going to lay money on kissing because there’s been no food visible in the room. Unless they’re, hell, mama bird-ing it or something (and they could be, people are strange and people fucking are stranger) Faraday looks too busy clawing futilely at the fabric of his shirt behind his back that holds him captive to do anything but let himself get kissed. 

The punk’s hands are gone from view for awhile until suddenly Faraday’s pants drop and ah, okay. That makes sense. Faraday’s face makes contact with the desk again, one hand pressing his cheek down. The other likely gripping his hip if the angle of the punk’s elbow from behind is anything to go by. He’s standing in a way that blocks most of Faraday’s ass from the camera, thankfully, but the angle is clear enough that over their shoulders, folded as they are, with the punk draped over Faraday’s back as close as the denim jacket he’s still wearing, the picture of their faces in profile is still clearly visible if not HD. 

“Give it up, Joshua. I know you want to.”

“Fuck yeah.”

A crack of skin on skin fills the room and his headphones so suddenly Vasquez jumps, not as hard as Faraday and he doesn’t gasp either but he’s not the one who got hit. 

“No. C’mon baby, you can do better.”

“I, shit.” Faraday’s swallow is audible. Vasquez frowns and leans in because his distress is palpable. If he needs to get in there, stop this, and save that overeducated guerre from himself, he will. He’ll hate it but he’ll do it. But a long, almost eternal moment later he manages to grit out, through a jaw that is literally clenched, “I want to, Daddy,” which is disturbing but definitely consensual. So at least there’s that?

“So good, baby. I got you.”

Vasquez doesn’t know what he’s got exactly but it’s an easy enough guess because his forehead drops to Faraday’s neck and a moment later they both moan, long and loud. Faraday grunts out “Daddy” like the word physically hurts him and the punk says “Yeah baby so fucking hot on my dick” and then they’re both off, thrusting against each other like animals. 

It seems like their fucking should be shaking the screen its so frantic and desperate, the punk practically slamming the typically rumpled but cool and composed lawyer into the desk so hard the legs rock back and forth. It’s not a well designed piece of furniture. Thankfully the camera is mounted in the wall near the ceiling so the image doesn’t tremble even as the bodies in it do, desperation pouring out of Faraday and giddy hunger driving every slam of the punk’s hips. 

The whole affair is dangerous and unprofessional and, on Faraday's part, incredibly stupid. Vasquez hasn’t worked many office jobs in his life, contract jobs from the comfort of home being safer and far easier than working a help desk but prior to this there were a few occasions that necessitated going, um, outside. And they do all live in a society with standards and a few basic tenets of behavior. To get fucked by a jailbait emo reject at work is something anyone would know is a bad move. So naturally Vasquez checks to make sure the feed is still recording because considering one of the stars of this amateur porn is a federal employee? Well, it was already currency but damn if the value doesn’t increase every time Faraday calls the younger man Daddy, and he’s practically chanting it now. 

It’s starting to get repetitive actually. All the “Oh please Daddy” and "Yeah baby" and bodies smacking wryly together There’s not a lot of creativity or variation to it so Vasquez keeps one eye on the recording as he logs the call and grabs his bag. He did get an IT call after all. 

He’s on the elevator, the connection still miraculously strong when the sounds of an escalating climax fill his earbuds. A ruthless completionist and honestly a little curious, Vasquez opens the window with Faraday and his young Daddy. 

Faraday has gotten one arm free of his shirt and is flailing for purchase on the desk as he sobs out his orgasm. The punk’s got a fist tangled in his hair and the other arm wrapped around Faraday's chest in a grip that looks a lot like an embrace. Maybe it is. His mouth isn’t visible pressed against Faraday's neck but the sounds he makes sound almost hurt and when he groans he must bite down hard because Faraday’s free arm shoots out towards the edge of the desk in a frantic scramble that sends his elbow slamming hard into the desktop unit. Vasquez finds himself holding his breath as the brutal application of force meets the inevitable pull of gravity and the tower topples from its precarious perch to the floor. 

“Oh no, fuck!” Faraday gasps then drops his forehead to the hard surface with a hollow thunk. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck.” 

The punk had jerked back at the crash but now he’s pressing soft kisses to Faraday’s cheek, ear, and brow. It’s cute and totally out of character with the vicious hunger that colored the encounter a moment before. Now the voice in Faraday’s ear, and Vasquez’s earbuds, is soft and soothing. “Hey, relax. It’s ok. I know baby but it's too late to save it. Just let all that shit go and come for me, now. Daddy’ll take care of you.”

“I can’t.”

“Yeah, you can.”

Vasquez barely hears the choked out “No” but the punk hears it fine. 

His hand is gentle in blond hair now, straightening tangles his own grip put there. “You can. You’re okay. You’re not gonna fall. I got you, Joshua, I swear to God. It’s okay.”

It’s obvious that Faraday comes at that. His whole body jerks stiffly and he shivers. “That’s so good, you got it, baby, fuck,” the punk moans long and deep against his hairline.

Vasquez tugs the earbuds out a moment later because Faraday crying now, really crying, not orgasmic sobs but the kind that are personal and private. When he begins weeping and the punk pulls him into his arms, Vasquez feels like a true voyeur for the first time since this whole undertaking began. 

He doesn’t need this. He has enough ammunition. He hits stop and save and begins to upload the file to the server he owns in the Seychelles. It’s a large file and the office WiFi is terrible so by the time it’s uploaded to the cloud, Faraday should have had more than enough time to clean himself up. 

Maybe. Hopefully. If there’s any mercy in the universe.

He shuts his tablet down completely and stows it in his bag and squares his shoulders. Time to be Javier Vasquez, government IT technician extraordinaire who knows nothing about the two men en flagrant on the other side of the door. 

Right. Very doable.

He knocks on the door, loudly, three times. Then, with the best customer service voice he can muster, he calls through the closed door, “Excuse me, Mr. Faraday? This is Vasquez with IT. You called with a computer issue.” 

Vasquez tried to keep that last bit sounding like a question but having watched that desktop crash to the ground he couldn’t quite manage it. The rest of the week was probably going to get eaten up doing triage on that poor beast. The carnage was likely to be brutal and acting wasn’t Vasquez’s thing. Between the two of them Vanquisher was the one who knew about giving a performance. With all his movies and the actors he knew backwards and forwards, Vanquisher was the one who could have done this well. Vasquez did best just leaning on what he already had and calling it a day. 

“Shit!” 

That, Vasquez decides, is a good sign. He refuses to let it be anything else.


	3. Chapter 3

Of all the outcomes Red was expecting from the guerilla interview with Joshua Faraday, Esquire (and he'd run no less than thirteen scenarios, at least seven of which ended with security removing him bodily from the building), coming in the ass of his quarry while the fucked out forty-something white man cried in his arms was the last thing he expected. No, that's not quite right. The last thing he expected would be cradling said crying man in his arms after pulling out, petting his sweat matted blond hair, kissing the asshole's face so that he tasted tears as they caught their breath, and fucking liking it. 

Damnit, he liked it so much that he could feel his body mounting a valiant second effort in response to the taste of salt water on his lips and the almost puppyish way Joshua leaned into him, tucking his big dumb forehead against his neck, like that would make things better somehow. Yeah. His dick was starting to rally, what the actual shit? He and his friend were going to have to have a long conversation when this was over. If he believed in that sort of thing, it'd be a real come to Jesus sort of talk. Later, after he dealt with the legal disaster he'd fucked into oblivion and made call him Daddy.

Honestly, sometimes Red really hates his ethical boundaries. If he were the type to use people's sexual tastes against them he'd have struck black gold here. Done and dusted. Instead he's got rough aftercare he isn't really ready to deliver with a hot mess who isn't ready to let go with no progress made except for the truly spectacular bruise on Joshua's neck with teeth marking the bullseye and the come dripping from between Joshua's legs, both of which Red left in the heat of… whatever the hell that was.

He doesn't want to say passion. Passion is a fucking terrible word. It's an expansive excuse for behavior that doesn't tap into a single sincere motivation while also seeking to explain entire eons of otherwise inexplicable actions. The word passion is fucking bullshit, as far Red is concerned, a placeholder that people sub in when they can't find the real reason they rage or hate or love or want. It's a novelist's word, a lawyer's word, an essayist's word. It is not a journalist's word.

Joshua made him want so much he had to fuck because he poked at all the raw places in Red. Every voice that had gotten between Red and his dream spoke through Joshua, male and female in text and in person and over video chats and on telephone calls, from the next room and across an ocean. The dismissive, belittling messages were fairly standard before joining Vice. ("Get out of here kid, you're too young boy, you don't know what you're doing squirt, you're not qualified brat, who the fuck's gonna hire you, you dropped out of high school and got a GED kiddo, no one's interested in someone with so little experience come back with a degree junior.”) Joshua might as well have struck a match and lit him on fire like a stuntman doused in gasoline because he went up in flames. By the time Joshua dropped, Red was shaking with his fury all the way to his fingertips. It had actually scared him a little because all Red had wanted was to take him down, prove him wrong. Making him sorry wasn’t even important at this point. If it were then he wouldn't still want to hold him, pet him after he gets him to the bottom, bring him back up. That feels like its own kind of wonderful. Bringing him up makes Red feel like he's proving himself to Joshua -- in a way taking him down never could -- that he's no kid, he's all man, and sometimes more than that. Shit, falling into that Daddy role was pretty damn easy after all. 

He likes how soft Joshua is in his arms. He used to be ripped and he’s starting to go to seed but not so much as to be grotesque, just enough for Red to be able to hold on to him, press against him and find a gentle give. If they were in a bed instead of on a desk it’s the kind of body that could tempt Red to settle in and take a nap on the cushiony flesh of his belly or chest and he’s just not the type to linger after a fuck. At the moment all Red can do is pet the tawny chest and stomach hair and make soothing noises in the back of his throat. It’s effective enough but not as comfortable as a nap could be elsewhere. 

Yeah he didn’t plan this. At all. Damn it. But Joshua is calming and feeling his breathing even is better than any trip he’s ever taken and most scoops he’s ever made. Joshua lifts his head from his neck, seeking something, what, a kiss? Yeah, shit, he wants a kiss. Giving it to him feels like winning and that’s its own kind of terrifying. Red hates how much he loves the way his baby’s mouth melts into his, that he thinks of this damn fed he’d known less than an hour as his baby already. Shit. 

"Oh god." Joshua gasps, when they part for air. He tastes like expensive alcohol and plywood. Damn, he'd looked so good licking that tabletop. Absolutely motherfucking perfect doing exactly what Red told him. Unfortunately, that's not a happy gasp nor is it a capitulating one. It's despairing. Red only wants him despairing when he's lost, completely and utterly, because Red has bested him. That sound coming out of him because the pathetic desktop tower from oh-something is lying ruined on the ugly seventies puke green carpet is broken and ugly and nothing like what Red wants to hear. 

"It's in pieces," Joshua whispers. "Everything."

"Hey."

Joshua pulls away from him, finally, yanking his arm free like Red's touch burns him, grabbing for his shirt and trying to pull it up to something presentable. "Shut up."

"No, Joshua, hey, listen-"

"Why? So you can tell me about the article you're going to write? Jesus Christ I am so stupid." He stops trying to put on his shirt to grab at his pants and groans. From this close, he can see the shimmer of wetness between his thighs for a moment before he pulls his slacks up. It's a lot to see. It makes Red's tongue feel huge and heavy in his mouth. He's never fucked anyone bare before. It was so intense, so close and now, seeing what he's done, he feels like he owns what he's left behind. 

Joshua though, glares at him suddenly furious like a cat with it's tail slammed in a door. "Are you even clean? Fuck. Fuck. How many earrings do you have? Seventeen? Twenty? Did you do them all with a safety-pin and a lighter? I probably have Hep B."

Red had sympathy for him about three seconds ago. Now he's ready to kick his ass into next week. "Well fuck you too."

"Hey, I'm not the Abstinence Only Education disaster here."

Wow, okay. For a little while there, Red had forgotten what an absolute dick this man was. He's starting to remember. "Says the citizen of the great state of Texas. How many times did you vote for Bushes Senior, Junior and Brother Jeb, gramps?"

"Listen here, you little-"

Three sharp knocks on the door cut Joshua off before he can finish the thought with whatever creative insult he was going to come up with next. Red watches his head snap to the door like a spooked cat, his shoulders hunching defensively even as he fumbles to tug his shirt the rest of the way on. 

“Excuse me, Mr. Faraday?" calls a voice through the door, precise and masculine with a thick Spanish accent. "This is Vasquez with IT. You called with a computer issue.” 

"Shit!"

"Isn't this a good thing?" Red muses, looking at the slain computer terminal. "He can probably help."

"We look like we just finished fucking," Joshua grits out, so softly Red can barely hear him.

Red takes in the rather enticing sight of Joshua with his shirt misbuttoned, the top two completely undone, untucked and mussed. He knows that under his slacks, he's still dripping semen from his recently loosened hole and even with the collar of the shirt mostly back in place, the purple-blue-green of hickey he left is still visible. While he he obviously can't see himself, he feels sticky with sweat and damn satisfied so, fucking duh. Thank you Captain Obvious. "We did just finish fucking." 

"Keep your goddamn voice down." 

"Mr. Faraday?" Vasquez calls again. "Should I go?"

"Should he?" Red asks, tilting his head down at the computer. 

"Fuck you." Joshua snaps. "Just fuck you." He smooths his shirt down. “God, let me be presentable.”

“You’re crooked.”

“What?”

“You’re--” Red cuts himself off with an annoyed sigh and doesn’t bother repeating himself, crossing the space between them and grabbing his collar, undoing the top three buttons that are done up one hole off and fixes it. Well, he does two so that the shirt lies straight. He doesn’t actually care enough to neaten the collar. “Good enough.”

“Fuck my entire life,” Joshua mumbles before he hops over the wreckage and crashes into the locked door. 

The IT guy on the other side is less Chris O’Dowd and more Chris Evans. If Chris Evans had a baby with Lito’s hot beardy art professor boyfriend from Sense8. Sweet leaping fuck, what the hell was a guy with a face like that doing in tech support?

“Prosecutor, are you alright?” Vasquez the IT Hottie asks with genuine concern. 

Joshua laughs and is an ugly sound. “Yeah. Everything’s fantastic. See?”

“Well, that’s,” Vasquez says before breaking off at the sight of the computer on the floor in at least three distinct pieces. “Oh, so, es una cosa. Wow. Ok.”

The wounded sound Joshua makes is one that made Red’s spinal column melt when they were fucking but is not sexy in this context. Sure, Red wants to make him sob (when he’s speared on Red’s cock and doing as he’s told, it’s a gorgeous sound) but this whole thing just makes him feel queasy, the way he’s fully dressed and sad-looking again. There’s no spark in him like this, no challenge and Red had been fucking thriving on that competition. 

Vasquez the IT Hottie seems to see it too. His hands flex in a way that Red suspects may be a nervous tic before he shoves them in his pockets and leans in, shoulder first, towards the computer carnage on the floor. “I’ll see what I can do, okay?”

“Everything is on there?” Joshua says softly. 

“No backups?” Vasquez the IT Hottie asks, sounding absolutely horrified.

“Of course I have back ups. It’s just—“ Joshua breaks off disconsolately. He drags a hand through his hair and then down to rub at the nape of his neck before tugging at his collar as though he’s already forgotten about the teeth marks Red left.

Red wonders what it’s like to live that much in the moment, to move so totally from one moment to another so completely as to be able to lose track of things that could cause such devastating consequences. It was probably freeing but it didn’t seem to fit with a man who had his trial record.

“It’s not the same you know?” Joshua tries. “You back things up and it’s like breaking pottery. You can put it back together but it’s never the same again.”

Vasquez the IT Hottie gives a little sympathetic hum at that and Red can’t blame him. Joshua looks like a man who hasn’t slept in days and sounds like he’s lost a friend. The frazzled, rumpled mess is nothing like the vicious predator who baited Red into pouncing or the desperate slut who begged for everything Red could give him. Red’s been in his office less than an hour and already seen so many sides to Joshua Faraday. How many more are there?

“I’ll see what I can do. I’m sure something can be saved.”

And that, Red decides, is his cue. He reaches out and puts a hand on Joshua’s shoulder and squeezes, just once. “You have my card,” he says carefully, keeping any emotion out of his tone. “I understand you’re busy right now but you should know, I’ll find what I’m looking for eventually. If you decide you want to revisit anything we’ve discussed, get in touch.”

“Anything huh?” Joshua asks, turning only his head towards him.

His face is blank except for his eyes which suddenly burn. They’re blue and the fire in them is electric. Red wants to leash it. “Yeah. Anything. Just at me.” He turns to Vasquez the IT Hottie and says, “Nice to meet you,” even though he never introduced himself.

Aaron Red Harvest does not break his composure as he exits the office of the Assistant US Attorney for the East District of Texas. Somehow, he manages to hold on to his poker face until he gets to his truck. He flips down the visor and uses the mirror to help him find the best angle to take a picture of the nail marks Joshua left on his shoulder. He crossposts the shot with the caption “the best way to feel the long arm of the law” with the geo tags turned off before shoving his phone in his pocket. 

As he tears out of the parking lot, Red thinks he should be more disturbed by the fact that he doesn’t know who won this round. But he isn’t. He doesn’t mind if this was a draw because the fuck of it all is that he really wants to play again.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warning:** This story contains age difference, under-negotiated but completely consensual D/s and Daddy kink, and non-consensual voyeurism in the form of a bugging where the two people having sex do not know they're being watched.  
> SPECIFICALLY Red Harvest and Faraday have a 15+ year age gap, Red is the dominant partner in a D/s scene with Daddy kink at a work setting with unprotected sex, and Vasquez has bugged Faradays office and records their liaison for his own purposes.
> 
> Notes: 
>   * Red Harvest and Vasquez are both VERY different and this is not what I thought was going to happen. Hope you're gonna ride this out with me anyway. Should be fun. I'll be going through to make corrections to any inconsistencies to old fics that mention them as this is their first official enterance. Ready To Get Dirty is no longer canon. :D
>   * Do not record a conversation you are a not a part of, holy shit. It's so illegal to do that without a warrant. Most states have what's called a 1-party recording law which means if you are part of a conversation you can tape it but if you're not? You're bugging it and what you're doing is absolutely a crime. Alexa, play My Existence Is A Felony.
>   * There are several different kinds of immunity but short of judge mandated immunity - where a judge has ordered someone to testify in violation of their 5th Amendment rights and therefore offered to protect them from from prosecution for what they have said - letter immunity is typically what people mean when they talk about an "immunity deal." It's the most common kind but is highly conditional on the person up for immunity fulfilling the terms of their side of the bargain which is part of why Faraday is so frantic.
>   * TOR is The Onion Router and is basically how you get on the Dark Web. But like...if you arent a system admin sometimes you cant install programs and like...then what?
>   * ALWAYS HAVE SAFE SEX. I cannot stress this enough? Like, don't do what they did? This is fiction but I just have to disclaimer: ALWAYS USE PROTECTION!
> 



End file.
